Thursday, 17 April 2014

Peter Sellers

was a mad c•nt so former Goon Michael Bentine told me when I asked him what Sellers was like to work with. I also asked how Sellers managed to master his many voices, from his French Clouseau the very un P.C. Indian voice through to his Austrian sounding Dr Stangelove?

Bentine said that Sellers secret was that he had bought one of the very first tape-recorders available to domestic consumers. They (The Goons) would all practice their character voices by recording and then playing back the result. In the 1950s this was cutting edge. Now everyone has a high quality recorder in their pocket in the form of a smartphone, of course you still need the incredible talent that Peter Sellers had to create those voices, but now we can all practice.